Thursday, 27th January 2011
00.00hrs Distance traveled since St. Helena.............................1,128 miles (we sailed 380 miles in the last 48 hours). It was a beautiful starry night again, one ship passed heading east away in the distance to the south.and the blue spinnaker was flying.
02.00hrs Sham called Skipper, who was in the bunk at the time. On deck, the spinnaker was blowing in the wind, soon it became apparent that the guy had sheered off (as Terry says, "Just broke").
Chrips, more trouble! We turned on the fwd deck lights, put on the gloves and made our way to the fore deck. At this stage, all the retrieving lines on the Spinnaker sock were twisted around the spinnaker itself, so this made the task of snuffing the sail much more difficult. However, after much struggling, pulling and hauling, cursing and swearing, we managed to get things under control and eventually managed to drop the sail on deck. At this stage we were dripping from the hard work and the heat, we could have been squeezed out to dry.
We then set up a goose wing arrangement and off we went again on our merry way. All is well again, so we sat down in the cockpit and had a cup of "Barrys Tea", and the Girls slept through the whole thing jus as girls should do!
07.00hrs We had covered 200 miles in the last 24 hrs.
09.00hrs :- RADIO CALL We made good progress on the whole fleet again over the last 24 hours.
Today, we were back to cornflakes and cornflakes for breakfast, no more fancy stuff for the moment. Another beautiful day. We spent some time looking at the spinnaker, but did not take it out of the sock, we also did some sewing on the sock itself, its beginning to show its age.
The flipping generator overheated again and stopped, we must have a small leak or something in the manifold, we will have to get this looked at sooner than later. But right now, the only thing we can do is keep topping it up with coolant. Aileen did the lunch, while skipper changed the lure on the fishing rod as nothing was happening here fast. Its unusual for us to go more than 2 days without catching some thing.
06.00hrs We put the roast chicken and roast potatoes in the oven and our milage in the last 24 hrs since this time last night was 182 miles. It makes a big difference not to have the spinnaker flying all day and night.
We gybed the boat back onto Port before settling down to another night at sea (night no. 8). The weather was good, moderate seas, the wind went up and down from 14 to 24 knots and the skies were partly cloudy.
That's all for now,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde ( Skipper )